


Pound of Flesh

by Cards_Slash



Series: Second Verse [9]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Skinwalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:14:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23448364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: They hadn't even finished cleaning up from the last men that tried to kill them, and here they are trying to figure out how to stay alive when facing up against a far more dangerous enemy.
Relationships: Doc Holliday/Bobo Del Rey | Robert Svane
Series: Second Verse [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632727
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	Pound of Flesh

The bar repairs were already in progress. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing a handful of hellspawn would show up to do at eight-o-clock in the morning but there they were. Hui was wearing thick black gloves, pulling the last of the broken glass off the wall behind the bar. Dudley was in the back corner with a little spatula and some goo that he was rolling into the bullet holes. 

Howard was directing men at the wall as they worked on breaking a bigger hole. 

“Where’s David?” Bobo asked when he paused at the bar. 

Hui motioned toward the stairs and the sound of something heavy and mechanical working over their heads. He added a description and Bobo just rumbled a growl as acknowledgement. Doc hadn’t been invited and he wasn’t entirely sure where he stood as far as going along to important meetings, so he lingered a half-step too long. Hui climbed off his step stool to reach under the bar and grab another one of those little white pails like Dowdy had. He slapped it down on the countertop with another little spatula and stared right at Doc’s face as he pushed both toward him. 

Sometimes, a common language wasn’t necessary where the meaning was clear enough. Hui didn’t even try to tell him that he needed to make himself useful this time. 

Doc picked up the white tub and turned it to the smudged-black print that explained what he was meant to do. 

Across the room, Dowdy said, “I can show you.”

“That would be much appreciated.” He took his coat off and threw it over a barstool before he took the tub (so Hui would stop glaring at him) and his little metal spatula. Dowdy was full of helpful hints and demonstrations, explaining every minute detail of how one used wood-filler.

Doc ended up crouching under the bar, figuring out how to smash the smelly stuff into the bullet holes. It wasn’t exactly the sort of preparation that he had assumed they would be doing when Bobo was full of half-expressed ominous warnings. There was logic to having a solid building to hide in when you needed it, but the cosmetic nature of his present contribution left him feeling a little bit like a schoolboy that had annoyed his parent’s a bit too much. 

He was so absorbed in the task of trying not to smear the filler across the wood while filling the holes that he didn’t even _hear_ Bobo come back until the man started talking. He said, “you need a belt.” 

“I need my own damn pants,” he said back. He half-turned to look up at him. 

Bobo was almost smiling at him but it wasn’t any sort of meanness. That little curve to his mouth was all fondness. He’d left his coat somewhere and acquired a tool-belt that wrapped around his hips in an oddly attractive way. “Well, when you finish maybe you should go back to the homestead and get a pair. You can talk to Wynonna while you’re there, set up a meeting somewhere she feels _safe_.”

“When I finish,” he agreed. Of course, considering what little progress he had made and the state of the bar, he might _not_ finish. 

\--

Hellfire gave man increased endurance and strength but it was hard to remember he was working with a group of demons when half of them didn’t have the stamina to work more than an hour without needing a ten minute break. As fragile as their loyalty was _at the moment_ , he sent them to get complimentary drinks from what little was left of the stock. 

“Things are bad,” Howard said when it was only the pair of them standing by the hole in the wall. “A lot of them have the feeling that things would be better if we were _freer_ to be ourselves. You remember Lou better than the rest of us, I’m sure. I only bring it up because I heard them talking after they heard he’d crossed back into your territory. They’ve got the idea he wouldn’t stand for things how they are.”

“You think they’d go to him?”

Howard shrugged. “I think they’d go looking. If just _one_ of them found him. I didn’t spend much time around the man but I’ve heard stories. A man like that smells blood, he’s going to come for the kill.”

Lou wasn’t direct enough to come for a kill. He liked to toy with his prey before he killed it; it wasn’t the dying that did it for him, it was the _fear_ of dying. “Only one of us is capable of killing Lou,” Bobo said.

Howard looked sideways, at where Henry had ended up laying under the bar, propped up on one arm and muttering curses as he filled in the bullet holes. Those stupid jeans he was wearing kept pulling down his back to a level that barely maintained decency. “I always heard it said that Doc Holliday could talk a man into anything. If we’ve gotta side with the heir to get rid of something worse, at least we’ve got the means to do it.” 

(That was very forgiving for a man who had been shot in the balls a few days ago.)

“Get with David,” Bobo said, “figure out how many we’ve still got on our side. We’ll need means to protect ourselves and somewhere we can defend.”

The bar phone rang and Dowdy (wearing as much of the wood filler as he’d managed to use) picked it up. “We’re closed,” he said with more force than was necessary, “maybe you’ve seen the car-sized hole in our wall. What?” He looked over at Bobo as his face lost all of his righteous anger and mutated right into all nerves. “Uh… Ok! Alright. You don’t have to yell.” He set the phone down like it was going to bite him and took a whole step back before he cleared his throat to say, “Uh, Bobo. Wynonna wants to talk to you.”

“Well,” Bobo said, “that was easier than I thought.” 

Henry sat up just to look offended about how Wynonna hadn’t wanted to talk to him. Bobo would have preferred if she hadn’t wanted to talk to him, but there was no going back now. He picked the receiver up off the bar, “Wynonna,” he said as patiently as he could.

“So, I met your buddy, Lou.” 

No. No, she could _not_ have. Bobo didn’t even realize his hand was tightening until the plastic cracked in his hand. The receiver shattered under the pressure so it was just two fat round ends dangling off skinny wires. 

Hui wasn’t impressed, but almost bored. Rather than lecture him about how they really could _not_ afford to have any more of their equipment destroyed, he reached under the bar to pick up the cordless phone.

Bobo shook the wires off his fingers before he took the new phone and drew in a breath to say, “ _why_ would you have met him?”

“Look,” she sounded _impatient_ , as if he had been the monumentally stupid person that had gone out looking for someone they were helplessly underprepared to fight. As if he had a habit of getting into shit that was none of his fucking business and finding out that it was harder than it looked. “If you know something that can help me, I’m at the police station. If you don’t want to help--that’s fine, can you send Doc over here?”

“Anything else?” he asked.

Wynonna sounded _annoyed_ at him. Like she was rolling her eyes at the police station, mouthing insults at anyone near enough to see her. “I’m kind of in a rush.”

Well of course she was. Anyone that knew they were about to die felt a little bit of a rush to finish things up. Bobo couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t flat out calling her idiot so he hung up the phone and dropped it on the bar. “Howard,” he growled without turning around, “get started.” He looked at Henry, already on his feet with his hat on his head. 

“I assume Wynonna needs help,” he said.

\--

Wynonna was filled up to the top with the sort of energy you only found in wild animals and brush fires. She’d been standing behind Waverly when they walked in, scratching at the two streaks of (what looked like) charcoal dust on her face, but she hadn’t managed to stay there longer than a few seconds. “Why just let me go? What is this on my face? And what is it about Lou that scares you so much? He’s a big-time cult creep but…”

Bobo had not been happy in the bar. He had not been happy on the walk over. He was not happy now, standing where he could see the door and the window at the same time. His answer was a long rumble of noise that shook through his body with enough force to make his fur coat shiver. “Give it a little longer,” he said, “maybe it’ll come to you while you’re being eaten alive by an animal.”

Waverly looked up from the computer to be _offended_ and _horrified_. 

“So you’re saying he really can turn into an animal?” Wynonna asked, “because they brought me back _here_ but I don’t know where Dolls is and he won’t answer his goddamn phone.” She dipped forward to pick up the cellphone on the counter, turn on the screen and then drop it again. “So if you have _any_ helpful information such as _where_ in the Pine Barrens he is so I don’t have to go getting freaky with a warm light again, that would be great.”

“Who told you where to find him?” Bobo asked. (Well, he _growled_ it but in a questioning way.)

“Does that matter?” Waverly asked. “Dolls is _missing._ Does it really matter how we found out where Lou is?”

Any man that knew Bobo (even a little) would have been able to identify the warning signals that were radiating out of him like a fog of heat. He had his shoulders hunched up like a great bear with his arms folded in close to his body like he was protecting his limbs. And he wasn’t smiling while he listened to them worrying because he was _scared_. “I know about your listening device. A tip for next time, make sure the metal matches in color. It makes it _less_ obvious.”

Waverly was fearless, frowning back at Bobo, “you didn’t find it for a week.”

“Whiskey Jim,” Wynonna said, “ok? We heard your revenant buddies talking about how you’ve gone all soft for Doc’s ass and then some guy comes talking about how Lou is back and everyone starts saying how you’ve always been scared of him. Lou killed Willa, he’s worse than you. Of course we’re going to go looking for him.”

“I believe we would all benefit from taking a moment,” Doc said. Not because there was enough moments in the day to do anything about the situation they found themselves in, but because this attempt at a meeting had turned into a stand-off. “We have established that _Lou_ is a person that we would all rather not continue living. Therefore, we need to gather the appropriate information to formulate a plan.”

“I thought that was what we were doing but your sugar daddy isn’t helping.”

Bobo was uncoiling like a spring, all set to give up the safe space he’d made for himself just to start a fight that wasn’t worth having. Doc didn’t understand the implications of the word ‘sugar daddy’ but he understood the tone of voice it was said in. 

“Wynonna, sit _down_ ,” Doc said over the shivering silence just before everyone started shouting. He looked over at Waverly because she was just about the only person in the room that could keep a cool head in a situation like this one. 

Waverly didn’t want to help _him_ and she sure as hell didn’t want to help _Bobo_ , but she reached out her hand to pull at Wynonna’s coat. “If he knows something, we have to let him talk.”

“Fine,” Wynonna snarled, but she didn’t _sit_.

“Lou isn’t the shape-shifter,” Bobo growled through his clenched teeth, “he has a skinwalker that he controls. That mark on your face means it’s only a matter of time before it finds you and it takes its time about eating you because that’s how he likes it.”

“But he’s just a revenant?” Wynonna asked, “so, we just gotta find Peacemaker and Dolls and go back to the mansion and shoot him.”

“You lost the fucking gun?” Bobo hissed. Everything metal shook in place with more force than Doc had seen before. 

“Yeah,” Wynonna hissed back, because she was the sort of person that couldn’t leave a bad thing alone. “I thought, gee I wonder what could make this more difficult and I just threw it into a bush. I wasn’t given a _choice_.”

“You had a choice!” Bobo shouted back at her, “you didn’t _have_ to run off into the woods after some monster. You have _no_ idea what you are up against! But you could have. I was _right_ here,” and he slapped his hand on the desktop hard enough it shook the whole thing in place. “You said it yourself, you heard all of them talking about how _well_ I know Lou. You think I’m the devil? You have no idea.”

Doc was one step behind Bobo and Waverly was one step to the left of her sister. They were on the outside of some kind of war, trading glances at one another about the benefits of getting in the middle. “All those revenants that think you’ve _gone soft_ , are they going to go looking for Lou too?”

Bobo straightened up, let his fingers drag across the desk as he went. He didn’t look at Doc, or at Wynonna exactly. His voice was regretful because he didn’t want to have to say, “if they do, they’re all coming for us. You’ve seen him, you think he couldn’t turn a few pissed off revenants into an army?”

“We need Dolls,” Wynonna said.

“ _You_ need Peacemaker.” 

“So we split up?” Waverly said from the side. “Doc’s the best tracker in Purgatory. We’ll find Dolls. You two go find Peacemaker.”

“What?” Wynonna snapped, “I am not…”

“She won’t go with me,” Bobo started saying, but he looked over at Doc searching for some validation that he was right. If he was looking for a way out, he certainly wasn’t going to find it in Doc. “What’s supposed to stop her from shooting me?” he asked when the room got quiet.

“Probably knowing she’s safer with you than without you,” Doc said. And if that meant from Lou or from him, he couldn’t even be sure himself. “Waverly, you are going to need a gun and Wynonna I am going to need a starting point.”

\--

This was almost the stupidest plan he’d agreed to participate in. (It was topped only by the plan that had ended with him in hell. At very least Wynonna was prettier than Wyatt.) Wandering through the woods, hoping to find Peacemaker discarded in the snow without running into a creature that wanted to eat Wynonna was just short of suicidal. 

Henry was either placing every ounce of trust in his body in the pair of them to keep the other alive or he had given up caring which one of them won in a duel to the death. Maybe he’d just been smart enough to know they’d be stuck in the cab of the truck, looking toward the treeline, both of them waiting for the other to leave first. 

“So,” Wynonna said, “something in those woods wants to eat me.”

More than one somethings, more than likely. “Yes.”

“Sounds like a great time.” She kicked open the door and started walking toward the trees with no sense that maybe she should have waited. And really, it would have served her right if Lou’s pet skinwalker showed up looking like a god-awful big bear. 

Bobo didn’t stay in the truck because he needed Wynonna. It wasn’t the most selfless of reasons but it wasn’t as if she was accepting _his_ help out of any sense of friendship. They were trying to figure out if they could be _useful_ to one another. He slammed the truck door harder than he probably should have and it echoed out into the trees. 

“Why not just shout, _here she is, come eat her_?” Wynonna yelled back at him. 

“It knows where you are,” Bobo hissed back, he reached out to tap the mark on her forehead and she slapped his arm away. “What makes you think this is where Peacemaker is?”

“It feels right.” Out of all the superstitious ideas he had seen sprout of Wyatt’s grandchildren, the idea that the gun could be located through some gut feeling had to be the most laughable. That was the only weapon on this planet that could kill him (although usually only for a matter of years) and _he_ couldn’t even feel it. Wynonna turned in the snow with a swish of her hair, “so what happened with you and Lou? Whiskey Jim said you used to be tight.”

Jim really needed to learn to keep his mouth shut. Bobo stayed three steps behind her, watching for anything moving in the snow that looked very hungry. “Have you ever seen a man torture someone to death?”

“And that bothers you?” Wynonna asked. “ _You_?”

“Did I miss something?” Bobo asked. He didn’t speed up, but Wynonna stopped moving so they were barely a foot away from one another. She was just short enough that he felt like he was looming over her. “I don’t _remember_ torturing anyone to death. In fact, I’d say that I played by your goddamn human rules pretty well.”

“Levi.”

Well sacrifices had to be made. Bobo rolled his eyes at her. “You don’t give a shit about Levi.”

“You have no idea,” she slid closer to him, getting into his face like she stood a chance against him at the moment, “what I give a shit about. You’re not even _human_.”

Bobo didn’t touch her. It wasn’t a matter of being a gentleman but the half-thought realization that if he put a single finger on her he might just have to strangle her. She wasn’t even the biggest of his present problems, but the smugness that she looked at him with was grating against his skin. Still, his hand cupped around the shape of her face as he tipped his head, “you’re not better. I sent him across the line that’s hell on _earth_. You sent him to _hell_. Pot,” he tipped his finger back toward his own face, “kettle.”

Wynonna was _furious_ , angrier than he’d ever seen her. Angrier than she’d ever managed to be about how he went off and wronged Ward. (And if anyone got fucked in that arrangement it had been him. That bastard had promised him freedom and complicated a simple plan just so he wouldn’t have to feel bad about it later.) 

Bobo leaned away from her, “we’ve even got the same taste in men.”

The woods were never the right place for a fist fight but the Pine Barrens were worse than most. Wynonna punched him with a shout of anger, like she’d finally, _finally_ been pushed too far. It was his fault for picking at sore wounds and her fault for not letting go. “We are _nothing_ alike!”

There was blood in his mouth swishing around with the spit. Henry wouldn’t like the idea of hitting women because it didn’t fit in with code. It wasn’t that he hadn’t ever hit a woman before, but he wouldn’t have liked it nonetheless. Bobo turned his face to spit and when he looked back, Wynonna was all tensed up for a fight. “We _need_ the gun,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before the skinwalker finds your friend. That’s assuming she hasn’t already.”

Standing still was giving up, so he started walking. 

Wynonna didn’t move from where she stood, still working off all that anger that had no place to go. She called out, “you’re going to get him killed.” 

If they didn’t have Peacemaker they were all going to die. He spun on his heels with his arms out, “are we just going to do this here? Are you finally going to tell me what a bad person I am? How I don’t deserve him? How I mistreat him?” He took a step forward while she frowned at him, “how you could treat him better?”

“I wouldn’t treat him better,” Wynonna said softly, “but nobody would be trying to rape him either. He can sleep because nobody’s shooting through my windows at two in the morning. And _yeah_ , we’re out here now, trying to find a gun I lost and he’s putting himself in danger because I asked him to, but nobody’s trying to kill him just because of me.”

“Wynonna,” and he did step up close enough to press his hands to her face, not hard enough to trap her, but to hold her still. She let him touch her, let him tip his head so they were blocking out all the world but each other. “If Lou takes control of the revenants, they _will_ murder your whole fucking town. We _need_ the gun and neither of us can do a damn thing to tell John Henry Holliday what to do.”

Wynonna didn’t push him away but she stopped staring at his coat to look him right in the eyes. “ _You_ can,” she said very softly, “because he loves you.” 

When she did move, it was to shake him off. She stepped backward and cleared her throat. “I remember this, it feels familiar. I think we should go this way.”

\--

Doc hadn’t been hopeful enough to think he’d get away from any trip involving Waverly Earp and a small space and not be on the receiving end of some of her well-meaning but vaguely insulting concern. The most he could hope for was that she’d allow him to smoke in her car. But even that, she had watched him pull the cigarillo out of his pocket while she wrinkled up her nose with a frown. 

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to send Bobo out there with Wynonna?” 

No, but the alternative had been worse. Bobo was smart enough to know that Wynonna was his only chance at getting rid of Lou once and for all and Wynonna was capable of setting aside grudges when the situation called for it. “It was _my_ idea,” he said.

Waverly was filled up with nervous energy, keeping both of her hands on the wheel as she stared forward at the road with so much concentration her whole face seemed to hollow out. She had turned the music off when she got in the car, so there was nothing but the sound of the wheels turning on the road and the wind whistling past the windows to eat up the quiet. 

“Your sister will be…”

“You’re _really_ sleeping with Bobo because you want to?” she asked with no indication that she’d been marinating on some doubt on the matter. 

Doc shifted in his seat so he could look at her more fully. “You mean my _pimp_?”

“Yeah,” she looked over at him and her whole face was caught between _anger_ and _worry_. “That’s what I’m asking. Is he your pimp? Did you make some _deal_ with him and this is what you have to do? Do you love him? Is this what you _want_?”

While he had the experience of falling off a horse, he had not had the opportunity to fall out of a moving vehicle. Paved roads were unpleasant to land on at regular speed, he could not imagine how much worse they would be at their current velocity. “Waverly,” he said without looking at her, “I am at a loss as to what further proof can possibly be provided that would be more convincing than what I have already said.”

“Sometimes, you’re not in a relationship because it’s what you want,” she said. Her shoulders shrugged a little, her mouth twitched into something like a frown, “sometimes it just feels like you have to be. So you tell yourself that you’re happy and that it’s what you want, but once you’re out of it you can finally see that you weren’t happy.”

The state of Doc’s happiness did not seem to be a concern of the very same people who had spent their time being sure to wiggle the word whore into any conversation had in a group setting at least _once_. If they couldn’t jam it into a sentence, they left the implication sitting front and center. He was trying to swallow the bitter taste in his mouth long enough to take this sudden outpouring of concern as sincere. But this little girl asking him if he’d been _coerced_ into a relationship he did not want had not more than a week ago, joined in mocking him with the rest. 

“Present circumstances,” he said, “have made it difficult to be happy. While there was some manner of exchange at the start of this relationship, it has not been about anything but mutual interest in one another for quite some time.”

Waverly didn’t have an answer for that. She didn’t even seem to know how she felt about it. Her jaw was clenched, but she was sighing at him and the road and the shrill voice of the GPS warning her about an upcoming turn. “Bobo used me,” she said very quietly, “I don’t think I can ever trust him.”

“I am not asking you to do anything that you do not want to.” 

She did look over at him then, just a quick glance and then back to staring at the road. “You’re _sure_ he’s going to protect Wynonna?”

Yes, and if it didn’t come to him naturally, he’d do it just to save his own skin. “I am very sure,” Doc promised. 

Her sigh was full of shudders, “do you think we’re going to find Dolls alive?”

No. “I think Dolls is the sort of man that would not make himself very easy to kill. He’s got a better chance than most, the way I figure it.” Just as long as he had something to keep himself warm and a reasonable head start on the thing that was trying to kill him. “We’ll find him.”

\--

“Are we closer?” Bobo asked. He didn’t have an ounce of faith that Wynonna had any special connection to the gun but pretending was better than facing up to the fact they were wandering the woods with no hope of accomplishing anything. At the rate they were going, he should have just sprinkled Wynonna with salt and pepper to make her more _appetizing_. 

Wynonna was muttering something under her breath too quietly to be heard. She stopped stomping her way onward to look up at the sky, like she was expecting to see something. “So,” she said rather than address the fact that she didn’t know where the gun was, “ _Robert_ \--”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You know how the curse got started? About the demon Clootie and Constance and Wyatt?”

Bobo didn’t want to get into what he knew at the _moment_. “Yes.”

Wynonna nodded. “Maybe we should call Waverly, find out if they’re having better luck than we are. Can you,” she motioned her finger in a circle, “sense anything? Any Peacemaker-shaped metal nearby?”

It didn’t necessarily work like that. Bobo might even have attempted to explain that to her, but there was a soft shurr of snow behind him. The distant sound of footfalls and heaving breathing. He hadn’t heard the sound in _decades_ but there were some things you just didn’t forget no matter how long it had been since you heard them. (Like the sound of Peacemaker and the bullet speeding toward you.) “Fuck,” he growled mostly to himself. 

Bobo shrugged the coat back off his shoulders, pulled at the sleeves when they got stuck on his arms. Wynonna was looking down at her phone when he threw it over her shoulders. 

“What the hell?” she asked.

“Put your arms in it.”

“I have a coat.”

The skinwalker was a _wolf_ , snarling and low to the ground, when she finally got close enough to be seen. Her fur was winter-pale and her eyes were vividly bright and filled up with all of Lou’s hatred. This animal was nothing at all like the woman hiding inside of it. 

“Oh shit,” Wynonna hissed behind him. “Is that the skinwalker?” She shoved her arms into the sleeves of his coat as she stepped slightly to the side so he was more fully between her and the animal coming to eat her alive. 

“Run,” Bobo said very quietly.

The wolf was sniffing the air, looking for the trail it had followed to find them. Wynonna’s scent was covered up with the coat and just for a minute (a very long one, if they were lucky) she was all but invisible even to Lou’s curse. 

“Won’t it just chase me?” Wynonna hissed behind him, “I think we need a better idea.”

“It can’t find you in the coat, now _run_.”

The wolf wouldn’t chase her when the trail ended here. Even if the skinwalker had all the smarts of a human, the curse reduced her to animal instincts. Of course, that left Bobo standing in a space that smelled enough like Wynonna to keep the wolf growling. He _didn’t_ have a better plan; he didn’t have a plan at all. But he was made up of meat and at very least that would slow the wolf down if it was hungry enough.

His only choice now was whether he stood there and waited for the wolf to attack or if he tried attacking her first. He’d confused her for the moment, it gave him the only advantage he was going to get. It wasn’t her fault that she’d gotten caught up in this curse, and he didn’t want to kill her if he didn’t have to. 

Bobo ran at the wolf before she shook off the confusion, but she was quick on her feet, and she met him between where he’d been standing and where he’d been hoping to get. Her teeth were yellow and white, and sharp as _knives_ , tearing through his skin like it was nothing but a bit of paper. They sank so deeply into his arm he could feel them grating along his bone. The momentum of her body slamming into his knocked him back. 

Caught under a bloodthirsty animal was the very last place a man ever wanted to find himself. Bobo had the benefit of endurance (and experience) but that didn’t mean much when all he had was one free fist to beat against the wolf’s head and neck. His legs were useless for anything but kicking at the snow as he tried to get enough leverage to move _away_. 

He didn’t see Wynonna until she was swinging a stick as big as a branch at the wolf’s head. It landed with a meaty thunk sharp enough to get the wolf’s jaws off his arm, but not nearly hard enough to do much more than piss her off. The wolf shook her head with his blood dripping off her fur. 

“I told you to run!” he snapped at her. His left arm was a mess, and his hand couldn’t make a fist until the muscles fixed themselves. The wolf was moving too fast to get a good grip on her, the best he managed was a handful of fur as she darted forward after Wynonna.

“And leave you get eaten!” Wynonna screamed back as she scrambled backward toward a tree. The branch she’d brought back as a weapon was lying in the snow where she’d dropped it. 

Bobo rolled onto his knees and stumbled to his feet. His left arm was dead weight, doing nothing but hanging off his shoulder and throwing off his balance. He grabbed the branch in his good hand. “I _can’t_ die!” He hit the wolf on the ass end before she got her teeth on Wynonna. 

That just made her _angrier_ , made her turn in a circle with a fresh snarl and new murder in her eyes. He threw the branch to the side because he didn’t have the _leverage_ to get in a blow that mattered. Wynonna was just staring at him with a wide open mouth. 

“Hit it harder this time,” he said. When the wolf hit him again, it was with _merciless_ speed. She didn’t settle for sinking her teeth in once but again and again, biting at every bit of him her mouth would close around. 

When Wynonna hit her this time, the branch broke across the flattest part of her skull. The wolf went limp with a sharp whine of pain and landed half on top of Bobo. 

Wynonna was breathing hard, leaning over him with half a tree branch in her hands, wearing his coat and looking _horrified_. “This was your plan!” (It wasn’t a question. It just wasn’t quite a demand either.)

“You were supposed to keep running,” had been his plan. He wiggled to the side to get out from under the wolf (since neither of his arms were good for anything but hurting at the moment) and back to his feet. 

“Doesn’t that hurt!” She didn’t make it seem like a question. She didn’t even look like she half wanted to know the answer. The way she threw the branch to the side seemed to suggest she’d been thinking about hitting him with it. “ _Fuck_ ,” she said for the sake of saying it. And, just in case it didn’t correctly communicate her thoughts, “ _fuck_ ,” one more time.

“We can’t stay here--”

“Because you’re bleeding all over the place?”

“--the wolf… I can’t bleed to death, Wynonna.” There wasn’t a whole lot that he _liked_ about being a revenant but the fact that there was only one thing that could kill him with any meaning certainly counted as a pro. “The wolf is going to wake up. What did Waverly say?”

Wynonna was just _staring_ at him again. “When do you think I had time to call her? Fuck,” she said again. But this time she started stomping her way back through the snow, retracing the steps that brought them here. She stopped six feet away to turn back to look at him, “can you walk?”

“It’s my arms,” he said, “not my legs.”

\--

Dolls’ unmissable large black vehicle was exactly where Wynonna had said it would be. The snow all around it was kicked up like a wild animal had been pacing for _hours_ , working out how to get in. Whatever it had been, it didn’t seem like it was still _here_ and it didn’t seem like it had gotten _in_. 

“You could wait…” 

Waverly reached behind the seat to grab her shotgun with a glare that seemed to suggest he should not finish the offer. As bold as her annoyance at being kept safe might have been, she tiptoed up to the truck. 

Doc went around the front, just in case there was a corpse in the front seat. There was nothing, not a dead or living body to be found. The truck was _cold_ , that sort of deep chill that you didn’t get until it had been left sitting for hours and hours. 

Almost every track in the immediate area belonged to an animal and it just wouldn’t have made sense for an animal to have spent so much time circling the truck if not--

“Waverly!” Dolls shouted.

Waverly shrieked at the sound of her name. She was still lurking her way around the back of the truck but she threw herself flat against the side out of instinct. Just as quick as it happened, she was shouting back, “Dolls! Are you okay? Where were you? Is that Peacemaker?”

Dolls looked pinked from the cold but he didn’t look as if he’d been eaten by anything. He didn’t look as if he’d suffered any lasting damage from an evening spent in the wilderness. No, he was whole and unharmed and carrying Wynonna’s lost gun still wrapped up in the holster. “Yeah,” he said, “it was in that tree. I just had to wait for the wolf to leave. Did Wynonna send you?” 

Waverly was looking at Doc so significantly there was no way that Dolls wasn’t going to follow suit. “Yeah,” Waverly said very sweetly.

“Where is she?” Dolls asked, “I think I figured out what the,” he reached up to touch his face with his fingertips and stopped short of finishing his thought. He hadn’t started staring at Doc yet because he’d been too busy directing all his talking to Waverly. “What is it?”

“Wynonna is looking for Peacemaker,” Doc said. He tucked his gun back into the holster.

“Alone?” Dolls asked.

“No,” Waverly whispered.

Dolls _did_ look at him then, like he was going to light himself on fire in a second. “Who is with Wynonna?”

“Bobo.” There was no point in trying to soften the blow. Easing them into it wasn’t going to make Dolls any less angry to hear it. Dolls’ anger wasn’t going to make Doc any happier to have to hear his opinion. 

“Bobo.”

“Waverly,” Doc said, “maybe you ought to call your sister and let her know that we have Peacemaker and we will meet her.”

Dolls had closed his eyes just so he could open them again, so he could make a production out of forming his mouth around the word, “ _Bobo_?”

“It did seem advisable to send the man most familiar not only with these woods but with the enemy that is hunting Wynonna with her.” That was all he wanted to say on the matter. “If you have a vehicle, why have you not returned to town?”

Dolls had nothing but opinions about Bobo and Doc too, but he was willing to push them to the side as long as they found Wynonna alive. Instead he was gritting out, “the battery died,” like it was a promise to inflict bodily harm. 

“Hi, Wynonna!” Waverly chirped to the side, “you’ll never guess what we found.”

\--

Bobo’s hands could curl toward fists by the time they made it to the edge of the woods. The damage didn’t look very much better, but the deepest parts of the wounds had already started regrowing. The blood was half frozen and half dried but he was already covered in so much blood it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. 

Wynonna hadn’t said a word after she hung up the phone. She’d been walking and grinding her teeth, only pausing now and again to look over her shoulder when she heard a noise. Between the thick stench of revenant blood and the coat she was wearing, she wouldn’t be as easy to find. (Not by virtue of her own scent, at least. Bobo was easy enough to track at the moment.) 

No, Wynonna didn’t say a single word until they reached the end of the woods, until they came to a pause just there, looking out at Waverly’s Jeep parked next to Wynonna’s old truck. Even then, Wynonna was keeping three feet of space between them, not even looking at him. When she said, “thanks,” it didn’t sound like she knew how she felt about it. 

It was just plain stupid for them to meet _here_. The more space they put between themselves and the skinwalker, the safer they were. The more time they had to prepare for whatever Lou was sending after them, the better off they were. But Waverly and Dolls had already jumped out of the Jeep and started crossing the flat distance between them. 

“Dolls!” Wynonna shouted, but she took Peacemaker from him first and pressed her lips against it as she mumbled sweet-nothings to the damn thing. 

Waverly was waiting her turn for her sister’s affection, looking between his coat still hanging off Wynonna’s thin shoulders and the bloated red hang of Bobo’s arms. Waverly hadn’t looked at him with anything but disgust ever since they’d met properly but this time that sneer of distaste wasn’t just because it was _him_ she was looking at. 

Henry didn’t rush about getting over with the group. He took his time about coming over, skipping over the cluster of bodies and walking toward him. His whole face went as tight as his frown as soon as he saw Bobo. “What in the _hell_ ,” he snapped. All of the unhurried annoyance that had brought him this far was gone in an instant. 

“Wait, Doc,” Wynonna said from the side.

Henry’s hands were painfully gentle, reaching out to lift Bobo’s left arm from where it was still hanging at his side. The skin was split along the length of the wolf’s teeth, deepest where she had dug with her fangs. 

“It’s fine,” Bobo said.

“It most certainly is _not_ ,” Henry said _back_. He didn’t even pause long enough to let anyone offer an explanation but lower Bobo’s arm as gently as he’d lifted it. His shoulders were already rolling under his coat before he had his hands free to pull the buttons loose enough to get it off. It dropped into the snow as he went straight to pulling at the buttons of his shirt. 

“What happened?” Waverly asked.

“Why are you wearing this?” Dolls looked caught up between protesting and walking away. 

Wynonna was just looking at him. Not at how Henry was stripping off his shirt without a single ounce of care given to the biting cold. Not at how Waverly didn’t know what to make of what she was seeing before her eyes. Not at how Dolls didn’t care about any of them the way he cared about her. No, Wynonna was just looking at him, with Peacemaker held tight in her hands. “He said he’d be fine,” she said very softly.

Henry was not listening to them. He wasn’t going to listen to Bobo either, but he said, “they heal so fast it’s not worth it.”

Henry ripped his shirt down the center, from hem to collar. “That is not an excuse not to _care_ for them.” That was all he was going to say on the matter. He reduced his shirt to long strips and threw them over his shoulder so he’d have them when he needed them. 

Waverly was all indecision and worry, but she said, “I can help.” Bobo didn’t even have the time to turn her down because she handed the shotgun over to Dolls before she inched close enough to whisper, “what can I do?”

Henry let her hold Bobo’s arm (and that felt like a miracle on it’s own) so he could start winding the strips around the wounds and tying them into half-shredded little knots. 

“The coat,” Wynonna said, “it protects against the skinwalker. Bobo made me put it on.”

The noise Henry made then was caught up like a snarl in his chest. It went through his shoulders like a shiver of cold that he probably couldn’t even _feel_ as angry as he was. But he looked up from delicately twisting the ends of his ripped shirt into knots to look right at Dolls. He held that stare, not saying a single damn word, until the other man looked away. 

“You have the gun now,” Dolls said, “we can go back and take care of Lou.”

“The revenants might not have gone to him,” Wynonna said.

There was always the chance that they might _not_ have. They could be made into a docile herd, but when they started breaking off into groups, they became impossible to control. As much as they shouted and whined and wailed about wanting their freedom, they always went looking for someone to tell them what to do. “Maybe not, but you have to decide what risk you’re willing to take.”

Henry finished (for the moment) and turned to grab his coat off the ground. He rejoined the conversation in progress, “haven’t you been listening to the bar for a week? What have they been discussing?”

Dolls sighed, “ _Lou_.”

“Wynonna,” Waverly whispered.

Wynonna was trying to get Henry to look at her and he was doing everything in his power to keep from looking at any of them. His jaw was clenched so tight you could almost hear his teeth start to crack from the pressure. She said, “we need a better plan. A _real_ plan.”

\--

Dolls had chosen to ride with Wynonna on the trip back to town. 

Waverly suggested Bobo sit in the front of Jeep because of arm rests and that had been a very generous idea for a young lady who had not even two full hours ago been insinuating that Doc was in an abusive relationship with a monster. It _had_ been a nice gesture, but everyone was capable of being nice when they were faced with something horrific enough. Nothing made you feel _bad_ like a bloodbath.

The long drive back was made in complete silence.

“Do you need me to get the door?” Waverly asked when they were parked by the police station. She didn’t look excited about the offer when she made it so it only made sense she was relieved when Bobo shook his head in refusal. “I guess, I’ll just head in.”

Bobo got the door open himself and closed it too. He was standing outside the Jeep, between Doc and the door. “I knew what I was doing.”

Well that was half the problem. That might just have been the _whole_ problem. Doc had no doubt at all that Bobo thought he knew what he was doing. It must have been simple math for him, Wynonna was more important to his plan so she _had_ to be saved. “If you are aiming to make me feel better, you are missing by a wide margin.”

Bobo’s first answer was a long rumble that couldn’t quite be considered a growl. His hands were moving with more coordination than they had before, but still wasn’t moving his arms as he usually did. “She came back,” he said, like _that_ was his idea of a peace offering.

It wasn’t that Wynonna had come back; it was that Bobo said it like she shouldn’t have. Like nobody ever had before. Like anyone with sense _wouldn’t_ have. Doc was caught up in thinking how stupidly unfair life must have been to leave a man with no idea how simple and how basic an idea being able to rely on someone was.

Doc was half-sure he was going to hit the man because it felt like the only thing he _could_ do, but his hands just cupped around Bobo’s stupid face to hold him still as he kissed him. It was the most brazen kiss they’d ever had, right out on the street, right where anyone that was close enough could see. The kiss was brief but his hands lingered. 

Bobo’s hands were still cool to the touch, almost clammy from lack of blood supply, resting just above his waist. “The boys are counting on _you_.” 

A lot of men had spent their time counting on Doc, but he couldn’t necessarily say that he’d always been up to the task. Selfishness made it hard to care about people with the degree that real loyalty required. He had been loyal to Wyatt, in every way that mattered, and just about anyone else he’d had circumstantial loyalty at best. But the revenants still showing up to fix the bar, the ones like Dowdy who had enough reasons to dislike him and still smiled when they showed him how to fix things? 

Well, any man that risked his life to rescue you and didn’t hold it against you when you shot him in the face deserved an extra bit of effort. 

“In that case, we should get inside before all the choices are made for us.”

\--

Henry needed new clothes. It wasn’t an _observation_ that was worth much to the conversation that wasn’t quite happening with any efficiency but it was hard to stop noticing once he’d seen it the first time. His undershirt was stretched out of shape from being pulled off and put on again, it wasn’t clinging to his body anymore but sagging off the shape of him. Those jeans he’d pulled on a couple of nights ago were looser now that they were well-worn in and the only thing keeping them up was how tight the gunbelt was around his hips. He was making a valuable point about the need for more input looking a little bit like a homeless man that wandered in off the street. 

“Alright, stop, everyone just _stop_.” Dolls stood up to his straightest height with his hands spread out as wide as they would go. He hadn’t stopped being annoyed since he strolled up to find Wynonna wearing Bobo’s coat but he was _listening_ (at least). 

Waverly frowned the hardest at being told to stop, but it was the cutest frown of seething anger that had ever been seen.

Bobo hadn’t _been_ talking, he’d been leaning back in the chair that Henry all but shoved him into, resting his aching arms so they had the best chance at healing faster. Now that they were getting warm again, the pain got sharp and stabbing all around the regrowth. 

Henry, however, had one of his hands on the desktop serving as the the center of the conversation and absolutely no forgiveness in any part of his body. Whatever Dolls had _said_ to piss him off, Henry wasn’t going to let it go until he’d rubbed it in as deep as he could get it. “I will _stop_ when you _start_ listening to reason. We are not capable of mounting an assault against an enemy with an unknown force harboring--as you described them--innocent victims.”

“I said stop,” Dolls said.

The argument that was almost certain to follow was interrupted by a polite rap on the door. Deputy Haught invited herself in without waiting, looking as annoyed to have been on the outside of the door as Dolls was to have his private kingdom invaded. She said, “this gentleman says he’s supposed to meet Doc here.”

Howard had never looked _less_ happy to be anywhere in all his life. He was clutching his clipboard like a shield as he nodded his head at himself. 

“Nicole should stay,” Waverly said, “we’re going to need all the help we can get and we don’t know how this is going to affect the town.”

Dolls wasn’t going to argue with Waverly, but he looked at Henry with a frown, “who is Howard?”

“Howard has information,” Henry answered.

“Is Howard a revenant?”

“Uh,” Howard started to say from across the room.

“Because we have a representative for the revenants,” Dolls motioned at Bobo.

“I can go?” Howard said quietly. Bobo shook his head at him, curled his fingers to get him to come closer. None of them (not even him, not really) had ever seen Henry as mad as he was at that moment. There was no telling how he was going to use all that anger but having a man capable of dragging Henry out if it became necessary seemed appropriate. 

“Howie,” Henry slapped his hand onto Howard’s shoulder with an excess of force. His fingers dug into the bone as he dragged Howard forward to put him on display. “Is a _friend_.”

“A friend friend?” Wynonna asked, “or a ‘might be working for Lou’ friend?”

“You may recall from your listening device, that I found myself the unwilling recipient of unwanted lecherous advances from a number of the less principled revenant population. Young Howard,” (Howard was not younger than Henry and he did not even look like he was), “was one of the few men that came to my rescue. Now, as I was understandably upset, I lashed out at my rescuers. Howard,” his hand tightened again, “was shot through the balls.”

Howard looked at Waverly with absolute horror. As if someone had just started cursing in front of a baby. 

“No man should be forced to live through such a thing, and yet _despite_ this injury, here Howie is.”

“It grew back,” Howard said like it _mattered_.

“Man that’s rough,” Wynonna said.

Dolls looked as if he wanted to cry just from frustration alone. He drew in a breath and said, “fine. Fine, what can _Howard_ tell us that will _help_?”

Howard glanced at him and Bobo motioned for him to tell them. “Well, we don’t have as many allies as we’d like. We’ve got eleven right now and that’s including Bobo and,” he motioned at Henry. “If we had some idea where Whiskey Jim was,” Howard glanced in Wynonna’s direction because he wasn’t going to _ask_ outright. 

“Yeah,” Wynonna said, “he’s probably not feeling inclined to help out right now.”

“He’s forgiving,” Bobo said, “as long as he’s not current in hell.”

“What about Lou?” Dolls asked.

“Oh,” Howard cleared his throat and looked down at his clipboard, “well, we got a visit from Cryderman today. A _personal_ visit, he came by to say that we’ve been ordered to stop repairs on the bar until we’ve paid the fines and applied for the proper permits.”

“You apply for permits?” Wynonna repeated.

Bobo rolled his eyes, “I pay taxes too. Why is everyone so surprised?” That wasn’t the important bit, “so someone’s gotten to Cryderman?”

“Hui said that he was whistling. Seems like someone’s convinced him that he’d be better off without you and by our thinking that only means one thing.” Howard was frowning grimly, “and there’s the fact that someone has emptied the second weapon cache.”

“So, bad times?” Wynonna summed up. “Worst, bad times?”

Officer Haught was standing behind Waverly, not asking any questions and still managing to understand what was happening. “How many do they have?”

“It's hard to know,” Howard said, “a lot of revenants are missing, they’ve got loyal human familiars and who knows what Cryderman is going to do if he thinks he’s getting a better deal somewhere else.”

“So they’re bringing the fight to us,” Dolls said.

“They’re bringing a _big ass_ fight to us,” Wynonna amended.

“The only advantage we are going to get is the chance to select our home turf,” Henry said, “while the homestead does provide a certain amount of cover to _some_ of our allies, we cannot forget the ones who will not benefit from it.”

Bobo leaned forward as he cleared his throat, just so everyone was looking at him, “the skinwalker is _not_ a revenant. She can go wherever she wants.”

“Great,” Wynonna said.

“But uh,” Howard whispered before anyone else could start, “the homestead is still the best option? I mean, we _can’t_ get on the land, but we’ve got enough mobile RVs that we could make a barricade around it. Depending on how much time we’ve got, we can reinforce the outside walls of the RV so they’re harder to shoot through.”

“Wait,” Waverly said, “wait, wait, wait--all these people are coming to kill us. But is _Lou_ going to be there?”

Everyone was looking at _him_ , like they’d finally figured out he was good for something besides glaring at. “If he’s not there at the start, he’ll show up once he knows his side is winning. He likes to watch the skinwalker eat.”

“I don’t know who Lou is,” Officer Haught said, “but I don’t like him.”

“I assume you have weapons,” Henry said across the desk to where Dolls was still frowning. 

“Yeah,” Dolls said, “I have weapons.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you've been enjoying Doc/Bobo fics, we started a server and would love for you to join! Leave a comment here or at my tumblr (bewareofchris.tumblr.com)


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